That fact has nothing to do with the rest of this post. Books! Specifically, my novel! I recently sold a small box of them I stumbled upon, and they sold fast. In fact some people who contacted me were not able to get one. So, I’m going to do a second round of signed copies of my novel, Strangeness in the Proportion.

You too will smile as big as this happy reader…

What do you get?

A physical copy of the book! All three dimensions (plus a bonus dimension). Look at that creepy cover by Christopher Shy.

Autographed, with anything else you’d like scrawled in it.

A genuine toe tag bookmark (never mind how I got them!).

The price (which includes shipping) is $25 to ship to the US and $45 to other countries (sorry, shipping nailed me last round). You can also buy the book cheaper and in electronic format (but sans signature and toe tag) at the link above.

I’ll accept payments through Paypal. If interested, email me at scrivnomancer@gmail.com (that’s not my paypal address, email me first) for details. I’ll get a shipment of the books in October, which means I should be able to have shipped to people before Halloween (a perfect time to read it!).

UPDATE: My copies of the book are sold out, but more can be bought HERE.

The last few weeks saw a lot of road trippin’. A visit home to my parents’ house turned up a forgotten box of copies of my novel, Strangeness in the Proportion. Behold!

I will be moving soon and must shed the weight of as many earthly possessions as possible. That’s where you come in! I will be taking online orders for copies of the book. $20 will give you the following:

A physical copy of the book! All three dimensions (plus a bonus dimension). Look at that creepy cover by Christopher Shy.

Autographed, with anything else you’d like scrawled in it.

A genuine toe tag bookmark* (never mind how I got them!).

Shipping (if you live in some far flung place, we can talk about how much that’ll cost).

I’ll accept payments through Paypal. If interested, email me at scrivnomancer@gmail.com (that’s not my paypal address, email me first) for details. First come, first serve. Only a small handful of these.

It’s about time Martine Svanevik’s book got out there. Go vote #56. It’s like investing in good future fiction for no money. A steal! Encouragement, at the right intersections in life, does some amazing things.

Back when Strangeness in the Proportionwas being serialized on White Wolf’s website, we received feedback from readers, even as we were still editing sections to be released (and further polishing for its upcoming ebook and print incarnations). That was the coolest thing about serializing and the immediacy of interaction on the web — being able to get feedback while the clay was still a little damp. One World of Darkness denizen in particular, Marshall Finch, gave back a lot of copy-edit input that went into improving the book (you can find him in the Acknowledgements).

Marshal recently sent me an immensely nice letter. I think it’s my first fan letter. I’ve communicated electronically with a lot of people, but I do believe this is the first physical missive sent to me by someone who knows me primarily through my writing. I’m several hundreds miles away from my parents’ fridge. So I’m posting this here. Enjoy. Or don’t. This is for me.

Dear Joshua:

Thank you so much for signing this (and for writing it)! It was a pleasure to be one of the first to read it during proofreading. I have several favorite books, between which I cannot choose because they fall into different genres and do not compete with one another for the niches they occupy in my heart. Strangeness is among those favorites, establishing its superiority in the ranks of those works that populate the peculiar realm at once morbid and humorous.

There are few perfect characters in fiction. It’s the rare author who ever creates a character perfectly. most characters are flawed by design, too passive, uninteresting, or unrelatably without error, Even those characters designed perfectly usually come with some error in their execution, a scene in which they deviate, a page which doesn’t seem to fit with the rest. Simon is without such error. Simon is one of those rare perfect characters.

You deserve all the praise you’ve been given by your fans, and more attention. You’re handicapped by the strange void that your work fills — unfortunately the romance genre is more popular. Notwithstanding, yours is the better novel, better than any I’ve read in a very long time. Thank you for making it a part of my life.

In Christ,

Marshall Finch

Christiangoth

A big…proportion (see what I did there?) of credit, for Simon turning out the way he did, should go to my editor, James Lowder. I had a very raw idea, and Jim helped me hammer it. Simon had quite a few changes from the first draft on, both in conception and execution. Jim helped me make the most of him.

Good Lord! You should see some of the offshoot ideas I had in the re-outlining phase, that Jim killed with expert scythe swings. Simon just may owe him his life. Once a year, he leaves small, gory sacrifices on the mantle and raises an absinthe toast to the force known as the Lowder.

· The PDF sells for $4.99. The e-reader formats are not available yet (e-pub, kindle, etc.), but if people get the PDF at DriveThruFiction, those formats will be free for customers once available – they’ll appear as additional downloads.
· Print on demand is on the way, though I don’t know a date or price just yet (stay tuned!).
· Once all of the are formats are sorted out, the ebooks will be available at storefronts like Amazon, B&N, and the like.

And finally, in celebrating Vampire the Masquerade’s 20th anniversary, I have an essay over at FlamesRising.com about how I met the Masquerade. Warning: contains gore, slashers, and me as a grade school boy.

It’s been a long road and a surreal day. I’ve heard a few people, in retrospect, say that Vampire and World of Darkness fandom has been something more than gaming fandom, almost like the fandom for a favorite band. I feel like my favorite band asked me up on stage to play a few sets with them. Rock on.

A withered old Gypsy woman sold me this little pumpkin-headed doll. She claimed it would give me the power to finish my novel and make it the bestest penny dreadful ever. But, she warned, for the doll to activate, I would have to tell the story of how I acquired it in a completely fictional manner.

And now that’s finally heading towards fruition. My editor contacted me. White Wolf has given the go on continuity and such. Time to dig out the current draft of the manuscript…shove it back into my head…

November, which is NanoWrimo month, will see me on my own novel scramble. I’ll be polishing about 100,000 words (give or take). Conan dialogue writing by day and novel by night.“All work and no play…makes Jack a dull boy.”

Thankfully I won’t have time to type that all over a page or on the walls or ceiling. That never leads to anything good anyway. Though I can make pretty nifty faces threw axe-holes in doors. But I digress.

I met Jane D. at work. She tells me who hurt her. Her hand tightens around mine. She smiles. This is love. This is rigor mortis.

Also…going over my notes…I did manage to find this handy, sophisticated, visual-plot flowchart that outlines the many nuances of the novel.

That’s all for now. Check back for more. I’ll surface from the pile of writing from time to time over the month, to update you all on the gory particulars of an unraveling mind and a deadline. Good luck on all of you participating in NanoWrimo. Keep me updated. I’ll keep you updated. And we’ll all get out of this alive.

Deal?

Remember, carpal tunnel is the enemy. Stretch! Limber up.

And self-doubts are little imps best brutalized with pipe wrenches, chainsaws, and falling anvils that you create in your head. It’s not enough to just say they’re dealt with. You really gotta anthropomorphize them and imagine brutally slaying them.

It works.

Do it.

I want to start hearing you all comparing self-doubt kills of the week in bloody detail. I want the kill counts to wrack up with the word counts. Splatter those pages with gory ink!